Posts Tagged: Letty Cottin Pogrebin Results 10

It should have been an exciting night. Anita Hill and Letty Cottin Pogrebin were scheduled to be in conversation about “Faith, Feminism, Race and the Ties that Bind” under the auspices of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and Interfaithfamily.com. But the two women sat in armchairs on the stage of the Levin Theater in Brandeis University’s student center earlier this month, lecturing the audience of 150 or so mostly middle-aged women about feminist history, rather than engaging in the deep conversation I expected to hear.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a legendary figure in the women’s rights movement, has embarked on a new crusade on behalf of sick individuals and the people who care about them.

Her new book, “How To Be a Friend to a Friend Who’s Sick” (PublicAffairs) pinpoints the awkwardness and inadequacy that many people feel when trying to comfort their sick and bereaved loved ones. “Illness is friendship’s proving ground,” she writes. Yet why do so many of us fail that basic test?

One of the biggest questions asked of Pogrebin was about Ms.’s role in shaping the coverage of other women’s magazines, inspiring the glossies’ inclusion of issue-oriented, reported features that stand out amongst the makeup and style pieces. Another question addressed? Whether Ms., which began as an offshoot of New York magazine, after all, has had an influence in today’s online media culture. She says:

Leave it to feminist icon Letty Cottin Pogrebin to spice things up. On the new episode of The Jewish Channel series “The Salon,” a conversation about the so-called “war on women” leads Pogrebin to discuss the power of the female orgasm: